AuthorTopic: Migrursut: What Comes After The World Ends? [Epilogue] (A Community Fort) (Read 271621 times)

I just thought I'd quickly point out something. The one year anniversary of Migrursut is coming up pretty soon, nine days from now.

Holy crap, is it really? Well this is a pretty big milestone, especially considering-

Fun-Fact (that I may have mentioned before): my original plan for this fortress was for it to last about as long as Chapter 1 did, because I couldn't imagine this going on any longer (or surviving) any longer than that. Seriously, a bunch of guys in a hostile desert, digging a big pit? That'll be done in like, two, three dwarf years, tops. I'm happy it's been able to run this long

No one has said anything, and really, it hasn't come up except in a few of the pictures and character descriptions, but Dwarves no longer have ACTUAL names, they all have nick-name first names. The reason for this, is my constant complaint and fear that Dwarf Fortress is eating itself from the inside. Dwarf names are getting reset on a near-constant basis, but only for Dwarves that have joined the fort less than ... say, seven years ago. I think it has to do with taking damage; When Sparrow recently got a brown wound from a Camel, his name reverted back to Dodek.

I'm sure that was boring and not really necessary. Really, I just wanted to type a bunch of shit. I got like five non-consecutive hours of sleep last night, and I'm on a muffin-and-coffee fueled bender right now.

Diary of maggargOne of the new recruits, Luke, I think, has been looking through those old books of fancy combat techniques to fight the undead.Most of them are fantasy, hell, I wrote a few of them in a publishing scam back in the late spring o' '29.Fun times.Anyway, the lad was captain of some squad called the Copper floodgates.Probably bought his way in, listening to that accent.

I've actually been keeping a mental list of random facts and little bits of trivia. Once this story wraps up - whenever that may be - I'll probably do a series of posts like Kuli did waaaaay back when of things I expected, things that went different, alternate ideas, and how the game managed to dick me over good.

That reminds me. Did you ever find out how or why Grov and the raccoon were trapped in stone?

Well, I found out that a VERY long time after he got trapped in stone, he ended up getting abducted. Well, not Grov, specifically, just a child. But that made Grov disappear from the map, so I've given him a new child and just... hoped no one would notice. Since he's cloned and all, anyway.

The raccoon's still there, though. Just chilling out. Being a raccoon in some rocks.

With the sun long set, and the moon hidden behind heavy cloud cover, Vatek began making his nightly rounds. His body was wrapped in a long cloak, his mace cradled loosely in his hand, the ex-guardsman skulked through the sands silently, leaving only the faintest imprint of his boot heel in the sands.

Outside of the Goblins in their brazen daylight raids, and the hordes of camels roaming the edges of their territory menacingly, this fortress was surprisingly quiet. All the better - these people, they deserved a reprise from the horrors of the sands, and a few months of the average dangers would seem positively calming compared to scar-covered hell-women, and invisible goblin horrors bent on attacking Dodik's head-on.

Movement in the distance caught his eye. There was a faint flicker of torch-light in the nothern most gate tower's lower window. No guards ever enter that tower, this isn't right. Quietly Vatek snuck towards the tower, and loitering briefly outside, he pulled a leather mask from a pocket sewn inside his cloak and slid it over his head. The cloak discarded, the leather-clad Dwarf darted around the corner and through the cracked door, his voice low and commanding, "Stop! No more movements!"

The Dwarf was beefy, his muscles large and knotted from apparant heavy use. Long matted hair hung down his back in a makeshift queue, and on each shoulder he carried a large barrel, the words "long-term storage" written in big dripped-red letters. The dwarf continued to move, gingerly placing the two barrels beside the staircase up, and brushed black powder from his hands. He turned, and Vatek inhaled sharply at the smooth steel weilders mask that covered the bearded face.

"Stand at attention, what mischief are you causing in here.""Thatta'd be nonna' yer' business," rasped the Dwarf from behind the metal. Torchlight glinted off the visor, making it an ominous shimmering of orange and black. "Ah'd suggest ya' turn an leave now.""I'd suggest you answer my question, or I'll leave you trussed outside of Major Merkil's office. I assure you, he will not be as gentle as I."

There was a snort of laughter, and the Dwarf lumbered forward, gloved hands raised up in a mockery of a boxing stance. Vatek sighed, and stepped into the room, his stance light as he weaved side to side. "You have to make this difficult, don't you?""Nothin' was difficult b'far' ya' showed up.""It's up to me to protect this fort from scum like you. If I have to do that through violence, I will.""Ya' talk too much.""Oh? Does that distract you?""Nah, it jus' makes me wanna' hit ya'arder."

Vatek dodged a hard right swing, wincing as the Dwarves hand connected with a wooden support pillar. There was a crack, the wood splinted, a fracture running down the center. Taking a chance, Vatek darted in, punching out with a quick jab to the Dwarfs sternum. Twisting and dropping, the Dwarf leaned into the hit, catching it with the top of his steel mask. Vatek howled as his fist throbbed in pain, his reaction time slowed just enough.

The masked Dwarf punched out hard with his left hand, catching Vatek in the stomach. Gasping for air, Vatek stumbled backwards and tripped over a pick, carelessly cast aside. As he dropped to the floor, he was set upon. The dwarf silently worked him over, the punches to the face and chest were just to keep him down, it was the steel-shod boots stomping repeatedly into his gut and groin that were doing the real damage. Bones cracked, something tore, and Vatek flirted dangerously towards the black edge.

"STOP!"

The blows did just that, suddenly abating. Opening one eye, Vatek saw the mask wearing dwarf cross his arms across his chest, his head tilted slightly as Stravitch strode towards him. Elation flared briefly, dying away as he saw Stravitch... bow his head, teeth grit as he was berated by the other in a tone too low to be heard. The ex-captain lashed out and pushed the one in the mask.

"Now see here you daft bastard, I'm perfectly fine with everything you've done up to this point, but I gave you specific things I would not abide, and hurting my little assistant was one of them.""How was I t'know'e was yer little thrall? He's wearin' that le'dder mask.""I step away for two minutes... and I find this. Unbelievable, Telamon. Unbelievable. Fine, finish what you're doing, I'll take care of this.""See ya' come back quickly, we've got more barrels t' move."

Stravitch moved over to Vatek's form, and squatted down - what might have passed for a look of worry on his face. The ex-captain reached out and pulled the mask from his face, clucking his tongue as he tucked it into the collar of his suit. "This will certainly make things awkward between us, but you should know you're mouth is sealed on this one. No word of... this to anyone, or I'll leave your corpse at Aryn's step with a note saying you're the one killing the nobility."

Vatek tried to nod, to speak, but he was too weak. Stravitch waited for a response, and when it didn't come, he gave a shrug. Telamon spoke from near the door. "'tis a terrible thing t' hold secrets, of ana'one here, ah would know. But ah trust ye'll do the right thing, if not fer' yer own disposable life, than fa'r the good of all yer' friends. Fer they're happiness."

Stravitch rocked Vatek with a hard right to the jaw. The lights in the tower exploded, millions of stars that blinked into existance with a brilliant pain. His conciseness slipped away as they vanished, their energies quenched by darkness.

We actually knew that Vatek was Batdwarf a while ago. The update after Hikan gets attacked by Grovs.

The journal of Lieutenant Hikan Riddlewire, hidden in the wastes.Entry for the week of 1st Timber, 1068.

Word circled around and eventually reached my ears that Vatek Yellowbolted, my sometimes partner, has been injured. His pelvis was crushed and in the process he suffered massive amounts of internal injuries. It's a miracle he's alive.

This naturally leads me to ask: What was he doing that got him injured in the first place? Maybe I should go visit him and ask. I haven't talked to the guy in months, ever since he started sleeping in the daytime, but he needs to spill whatever he's hiding instead of spilling his guts if he doesn't want something like this to happen again.

Heh, I can't believe I'm actually worried about the guy. I guess, when you're in my position, friends are hard to come by. Well, maybe not friends. Polite working acquaintances, at least.

Well, whatever. I'm sure he'll be fine. Nobody spends as long as he did taking Stravitch's abuse without being a tough son of a bitch.

You know, it's fucking uncanny how many times people scream that Jim is out to get them and has rallied the town to destroy them, like he's the head of some damn conspiracy theory or something. I've learned to recognize this as something I call "The Jimbot Fallacy".

The Dwarf was beefy, his muscles large and knotted from apparant heavy use. Long matted hair hung down his back in a makeshift queue ... He turned, and Vatek inhaled sharply at the smooth steel weilders mask that covered the bearded face.

Usually the phrase 'tougher than he looks' is used for apparent pansies, not steel-faced matted-haired guard-punching resistance-organising trade-mandate-breaking mask-wearing pump-operating unafraid-of-Stravitch psychotic loony dwarfs.

The back room, as cluttered and musty as it was with barrels of hard cheeses and watered down wine, made quite the fine meeting room for Dodik-Come-Lately and her crew. Madam Dodik perched on the edge of boxes stacked with salt pork, tapping the heel of a boot against them in irritation. Mookie stood in a corner, idly picking at the paint chipping from her thumbnail, smacking her lips as she worked over the sweetened blob of chicle. Rinsesilver brushed lint from her sleeve, and with a scowl, broke the silence to start the meeting.

"We need more security.""More security?" Dodik asked, shocked. "MORE? Are we talking about the same place?""Vatek got worked over like a drum," Rinsesilver said. "Vatek. You seen that guy? He's like a steel barrel, quick and smart, and he's taken more beatings from that whorehopper Stravitch than anyone here not named Varen.""That's not very nice!" Mookie complained. "He's NOT a whorehopper! Until you kicked him out of here, he only hopped on ONE whore."

Madam Dodik closed her eyes briefly to regain her composure. After a few seconds, she spoke quietly, "So one dwarf gets a little beat up. That's no call for more security. We have Kuli's entire congregation meeting here three times a week for his sermons, and with them comes Jools who's as fine a swordsman as I've ever seen. We've got the Corpse Trio, the Spearmen, the Boltslingers, Eita and Neo until he got wounded, AND Maggarg's great bulk when he can drag Adol here. And on top of it all, we've managed to get Aryn off our back to operate as we see fit, yet you think we need MORE security?"

"Profits are up almost three hundred percent," Rinsesilver said. "Because a quarter of Kuli's congregation stay here for food and drink after a sermon - the Maester himself on occasion stays. The soldiers are gambling more, their pay increased by Merkil to stem the complaints after a few of their number died. This increase would have been even larger if it wasn't for Stravitch and his Telamon taking over the import/export operations. "And yes, we need more security. Because lest you forget, we lost our ENTIRE cache of gems and gold to some goblin maurader."

"You said that was Stravitch," Mookie said. "You said he stole it.""And I was wrong! It didn't click until Hikan had his run in with that pit-fiend out front of our place. The Goblin that wounded Rice, that killed Kib Machinescalded, that knocked out the Lieutenant... he's been making raid, after raid, against our operations.""You're scared of one goblin?" Madam Dodik asked with a smirk."I'm... concerned... about that one Goblin."

"And I'm afraid it's unfounded. We have all the security we need. He won't get in, and if he does? He won't get out. Our cache is safe, now please, we need to prepare for tonight's show.""I'll be praying that it is safe, Ma'am..."

Howard stood at the edge of the quarry, his hands clasped behind his back. Thin, angular, and undeniably regal, the architect watched the dwarves below constructing the first of the great glass-and-steel domes. They milled about like ants, carefully laying down slabs of thick glass, metal workers carefully raising the skeleton frame upwards.

Rice stood beside him, glancing from the blueprints in his hand to the workers down below. He made the occasional mark on the sheet with a charcoal pencil, and after a moment gave the sheet a tap and drew a hasty circle."What's this?""Hmm? While self contained, there must be some way to enter and exit the structure."

Rice frowned. "Where will the trade depot go?""Aryn deemed a trade depot unnessecary. This series of biodomes will be self-contained. We've already been in contact with Bertrand's successors, and they have agreed, for the good of our society, to help construct an indoor. If the miners can find a way to reroute magma to below the workshop dome, there will be no need at all to ever leave.""And what of attacks, you'll have an entrance.""It will be trapped with goblin weapons, outfitted with mechanisms from melted goblin plate. And the lowest level will be set to flood on invasion. It is unbreachable."

Rice wanted to respond, his mouth opening to comment on the sheer folly of this endevor, but the sound of shattering glass broke his concentration. He turned towards the sound, the color draining from his face."Oh no, oh sweet merciful gods above, no.""What is it?" Howard asked blandly."The camels are defacing Stravitch's temple!"

Curiosity got the best of the master architect, and he turned to look. A trio of camels cavorted out front of the temple, the skin on their heads drawn back to give them a mockery of grins. Capering, one of them blatantly turned towards the wall and reared up, sending two hooves through another stained glass window.

"When he sees he's going to go on the warpath..." Rice whispered. With a shake of his head, he raised his voice, "HELP! CAMELS! WE NEED SOLDIERS!""I'll handle this!" Wilber called from up at the gate, "SPOOOOOOON!"

"Oh god, sir, no, don't just," Sarek cried uselessly. As Wilber charged down, his weapon raised high above his head, Sarek ran after him, fumbling to get her spear at the ready.

Jools kept his distance, quite wary. His run ins with the trio had been brief, at best, but the stories proceeded them - her specifically. He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword just in case. Likot turned slowly from the cage she was staring in, her head tilted slightly to the side. Jools skin crawled as she fixed him with her dead stare.

"Death is such a funny things. Look at my pet jaguar in there. If you didn't know any better, you'd imagine he was sleeping peacefully, just enjoying the sun.""Oh..." the fear melted away, a deep frown lining the swordsdwarfs face. He stepped up beside Likot, peering inside the cage where the jaguars body lay. "That kind of loss, it's always tragic. You should know he had a very happy life, at least. The animals in this zoo eat as well as we do, and see lots of attentions."

"Mmm, I'm sure that they do," Likot said quietly. "Miss, if you don't mind my asking, what was... death like?"

It took a long time for Likot to answer, her gaze locked on the jaguar. She spoke slowly when she did, the rebreather making her soft words echo. "Death wasn't the issue, it was everything that came before. How can you describe the process of being nothing? One moment you're alive and in terrible pain, your guts getting pulled from your stomach like blood covered streamers, and the next you're... incorporeal. You're nothing, just a flit of soul on the wind, until the weird majiks of this place, and that fiend Bertrand suck it back into your stitched up corpse."But that's not the answer that you wanted... Death is just a nothing. That's the great joke behind it - it's everything you do up until you die that you should be concerned about. Those last few moments that you spend here will be terrifying and painful, and you should enjoy those as well, it's the last thing you should be expected to experience, with any hope."

Likot inhaled deeply, the rebreather clacking over as she exhaled. "No one's asked me about that, in the entire time I've been back.""With Kib, and some of the children, well... it's been on my mind.""Mm, of course. Don't fear death Jools - fear what leads to it. Fear that it may not last."

Glacies and Sarig stepped back to servey their handiwork. The dry aqueduct now had a ramp going all the way to the top, a project that had taken nearly four days. They had worked slowly and carefully, and rested frequently. The book-keeper, while fit, was inexperienced with construction work, and Sarig had, well, less limbs than the average dwarf. Probably less brains, too. Which is saying something.

The two dwarves wordlessly exchanged glances, and picked up their backpacks. They walked up the ramp and into the gulley of the aqueduct, where it used to feed into the central colloseum. The walls were covered with a black lichen on the inside, as the algae had dried in the sun and new bits of organic material had grown over the old. The ground was still slick.

Sarig and Glacies came to the end, where they found a steel grill blocking a tunnel that turned sharply down. They grasped the obstacle, and yanked, hard. It gave.

"Three." said Sarig."Two.""ONE!" and they pulled in unison with all their strength. There was a grinding noise, and the grill popped off. Then, carefully, Glacies and Sarig lowered themselves into the tunnel and began climbing down.

Unfortunatly, climbing has not been implemented yet.

Glacies and Sarig fell down into a large, natural looking cavernous lake with a splash. Coughing and sputtering, they swam to a little jetty with a well, and hoisted themselves up. Glacies wrung out his beard and looked around. The natural cave was probably a dwarf-made creation, as the little well attested. It was deep, and he could not see the bottom. The walls were rough olivine, and the cavern was roughly circular. There was also a wide, smooth tunnel leading towards the fortress. The hall was thick with spiderwebs, and behind a fallen columb, Blikikyus hid.

Blikikyus peered at the hairy creatures as they clambered onto the jetty and looked around. His golden eyes lingered over the scarred, elderly looking dwarf, as if something resonated long ago in his memory. Dwarf. Then, the kobold wrapped his musty cloak around him and scuttled down into the halls. Burnchance would have to be informed.

And something awoke at the bottom of the pool.---------------------------------------------So yes, I forgot about the whole story-thing I was supposed to have finished a couple months ago. Back to work!